Chapter 37
Now
I threw the shovel aside and sank to my knees, plunging my fingers into the dirt like a crazed animal, digging and sifting.
Casey wasn’t here. No part of him. No skeleton. Not even fragments of bone or torn pieces of clothing.
Impossible.
Sandy earth caked under my nails. Under Casey’s ring that was still shoved on my index finger.
Where was he?
Burt had taken Casey’s helmet. Could he have moved Casey’s body?
I tried to piece it together, while my anger flared at the notion of him laying a hand on my friend. It seemed barbaric. Evil.
I pressed my palms against the cool dirt. Calm down.
Of course Burt hadn’t moved Casey. That was nuts.
More nuts than anything else?
More nuts than killing an innocent girl to get my attention?
More nuts than sneaking out in the middle of the night and finding Casey based on a story Frances had told him?
More nuts than taking his helmet? More nuts than keeping it for years, waiting for the right time to use it against me, to hurt my sister?
But mostly… If it was so nuts, then where was Casey?
What the hell am I missing?
Somewhere nearby, there was a rustle of footsteps. My thoughts froze in my head.
“Hello?” I croaked. I jumped to my feet and picked my way carefully back to the path, forgetting the shovel and pausing to listen every few steps. My hand instinctively reached into my pocket, fingers curling around the ever-present sliver of bone.
My heart thundered in my ears, but there was no warning in my gut. No whisper to run or pay attention.
“Dearie? Are you out here?”
Hattie-May.
What was she doing here?
This was once her domain. Aunt Hattie had been the one to introduce me and Frances to the shallow creek. We’d walk its banks while she pointed out different rocks and taught us to look for fossils.
But the frail lady who’d greeted me last night with a warm hug, then sliced up coffee cake as we plotted murder wasn’t the same Hattie-May as the robust woman who’d raised me.
“Milly?”
She sounded close. In the forest. I jogged toward her voice, hopping over fallen branches, pushing vines out of my way, as I dodged briars.
It would be so easy for her shuffling steps to catch a root or hole. “Over here, Aunt Hattie. Stay put. I’ll come to you.”
I found her near the forest’s edge.
“There you are,” she said. Her old eyes traveled over me from behind her glasses, and she wrinkled her nose.
“I was going to get the mixture from the greenhouse, but my key wasn’t on the hook.
Figured you were already out here and that I’d join you, then I heard you in the woods.
” She grimaced. “Lord have mercy! What were you doing, child? You’re filthy. ”
“Uh…” I swiped a leaf from my hair and shrugged, mentally reaching for an explanation that made sense. The truth sure as hell didn’t. “I wanted to see the creek.”
“The creek?” Hattie-May’s sparse brows pushed together. Her tone was questioning. “Why’d you want to see the creek?”
I shrugged. “I guess, you know, I’ve always loved it. It made me happy.”
“You did love it, didn’t you?” She paused. “There were some good parts about growing up out here, wasn’t there, honey?” Her voice was huskier than usual. “It wasn’t all hard, was it?”
“What wasn’t all hard?”
“Your childhood.”
“Of course not.” I slid my hand into hers. “Hattie-May, there was plenty of good.”
It was true. Weekends spent running wild in the forest with my sister.
Frances standing still as moths and butterflies circled her while I tried to scoop them up.
Searching for locust shells. Reading for customers, the Sight making me feel connected to something bigger.
If there hadn’t been good parts, leaving wouldn’t have hurt so bad.
“You know I regret it, every day.” Hattie-May’s voice was pinched. “Not coming and getting you after you called home that time. We thought…” She wiped at her eyes. “We thought it was best to let you disappear. But, Milly, don’t think we didn’t suffer for it. It hurt me every day.”
“I know. It wasn’t all you and Ruth. I’m an adult. I could’ve come back any time.”
Hattie-May shook her head. “After things cooled down and it was safe, I should’ve driven to the coast myself and dragged you home. I…well…I guess I thought maybe you were doing better. You never seemed very happy here. Always looking forward to leaving.”
“Oh, Aunt Hattie, don’t feel bad.” I squeezed her plump hand and lied. “You’re right. I did just fine.”
Somewhere, a crow called out, and suddenly, standing in the edge of the forest with trees towering over us, one hand tucked inside the hand of the woman who’d raised me, the other curled around the bone in my pocket, I felt very small. “Aunt Hattie? Did you check the news?”
“I did,” she said.
“Was there anything about, you know?”
She sighed. “Afraid not, dearie.”
“Oh.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “What if we don’t pull this off?” The possibility chewed at my stomach. “What if he wins? I can’t lose Frances. I just got her back.”
Instead of answering, she squeezed my hand. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
Hattie-May led me around one side of the greenhouse, past the lean-to, to the other end of the structure, tucked near the opposite edge of the forest. She stumbled, but caught herself and held on to me a little tighter.
“Is it a good idea for you to come out here alone?” I asked. “What about your oxygen tank?”
“Oh hush. You sound like Ruthie,” she said. “I always take a morning walk without it. This is my greenhouse. These are my woods. I could probably walk through them with my eyes closed, though I don’t reckon I’ll try.”
She gestured to the forest’s edge. Her lips pressed into an expectant smile, lines erupting around her eyes.
“Um,” I said, not sure what she was showing me.
“You don’t recognize it, honey?”
“Recognize what?”
She leaned forward slightly, and I was hit with a wave of concern. Ruth said Aunt Hattie mentally slipped away sometimes. Was she here with me, in the moment, or was my great-aunt’s mind in another time or place all together? Was she showing me something that no longer existed?
I peered into her small, dark eyes behind her glasses. “Are you okay Aunt Hattie?”
Instead of answering, Hattie-May puckered her lips and whistled. The tune was an earworm from my childhood.
Rotting Willow
Roots so deep
Searching for some rotting meat.
“No,” I said. “No, that’s impossible.” I looked closer.
There was a willow nestled among the other trees in front of me, but it didn’t look so different from the weeping willow that had once grown our front yard, the one whose branches I’d grown up playing under.
No way this was the tree from the drawings.
In sixth grade, I’d used a school computer and searched online for information about Aunt Hattie’s willow.
There’d not been much there beyond a listing on the US Forest Service’s website naming it as an endangered and protected species.
After scrolling through pages and pages of useless search results, I’d landed on an outdated blog discussing rare Tennessee flora.
It told the same stories I’d heard from Aunt Hattie and posted a few blurry black-and-white photos.
It had been impossible to know what the tree actually looked like.
Aunt Hattie’s sketches were frenetic and unsettling.
Even as she’d insisted the tree was good, her drawings, with their deep shading and slashing strokes, had depicted a willow with branches that seemed to want to strangle the world.
Roots that were hungry. Pictures that inspired little girls to create deep-reaching lore and scare each other once the lights were out.
The tree in front of me did not have the green-black leaves or crimson seed pods Aunt Hattie reported seeing as a child. This could not be the tree she’d dedicated her life to finding. It was too plain. Not worth the years she’d given it.
Looking closer, yes, the leaves were a deeper green. And maybe the roots were a little more jumbled, a little more risen. Nothing I’d have ever looked twice at.
“How can this be the rotting willow?” The childhood name slipped out.
Hattie-May wrinkled her nose. “Mourning willow, dearie. The rotting willow was you girls’ creation.”
“But this—”
“This is real.” She smiled. “Real and beautiful.”
I frowned. “How can you know? I mean, it’s not so different from any other weeping willow.
And where did you find it? I thought there were no more.
” I struggled to string together my thoughts, which was ridiculous, all things considered.
It was only a tree, and out of everything I’d been through lately, a tree shouldn’t have left me speechless.
But the rotting willow had been such a mythical part of my childhood, I might as well have been standing in front of one of the cryptids Aunt Ruth claimed lived in the deep woods.
I blinked. Maybe Aunt Hattie was slipping.
What was I supposed to do? Go along with whatever she said? The last thing I ever wanted was to hurt my great-aunt.
“I always knew I’d see it again,” she said. “Felt it deep inside, a whisper from beneath the internal door urging me to keep looking looking looking.”
She patted my hand. “So that’s what I did. I kept looking for years. A lifetime. And then”—she shrugged—“the forest has a way of providing right on time.”
Right on time?
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Hattie-May chuckled. “It’s endangered, as you know. One of nine trees that are protected.” She paused, and when I said nothing, she pressed on. “A person can get in a whole lot of trouble if they dig it up or disturb the roots. Even the police would require special permission.”
“I am…I…” I shook my head, my fingers going to my temples. “I’m sorry. It’s been a wild twenty-four hours. Where did you find it?”
Hattie-May chuckled, then shrugged. “Out yonder ways.” She pointed in the direction from which we’d come.
“Found it on one of my walks. It was only a hardheaded little sprout. Barely a stick with leaves, fighting its way through the dirt, about yea big.” She held the index fingers on each hand about four inches apart.
“And like I said, it arrived right when it was needed.”
“What do you mean?” I still wasn’t following.
“Like I said. Not even the police can move it. Can you imagine? This tree’s above the law. The cops can’t dig it up.” My aunt’s gaze bored into me. “They can’t check its roots for secrets.”
My mouth turned to sandpaper. “This tree—this rotting willow—you said it arrived right on time. You found it…when?”
“Right after you left, dearie. One desperate sapling departs, another desperate sapling arrives.”
I blinked, and it was the night that changed my life. I could hear, in my mind, the whirring of the bone grinder cutting through the crickets and cicadas.
I’d always suspected they—Ruth and Hattie-May—had ground Shane to bits. I hadn’t been allowed to know what happened after. I’d figured they’d dumped him somewhere far away, but it was possible they’d buried him here, close to home. Was this tree his gravestone?
“Hattie-May…”
“Hush, dearie.” She pressed an arthritic finger over my lips. “We all have secrets. Secrets must stay buried.”
My heart sped. Aunt Hattie was often cryptic with her words, but usually not with me. “Why are you showing me this?”
“To remind you. Whatever happens, we’ll get through it. It’s what we do. This tree isn’t supposed to exist, but despite that, it’s thriving. All it needed was a little help.” She grinned.
I wasn’t sure if this was a real mourning willow, but I was certain my great-aunt believed it was, and that the Sight had delivered her to it after a lifetime of searching.
Before I could dwell on this, there was the sound of someone crashing down the path from the house.
Hattie-May sighed. “Come along. I reckon it’s time to get back.”
We rounded the corner of the greenhouse at the same moment Frances burst into the clearing. She ran toward us, and as she got closer, I saw the tears. All thoughts of the rotting willow, and even Casey, left my mind.
Frances sniffed and wiped her eyes on the back of her hands.
“It’s time,” she said.